How A MET Usher Helped Samuel Ramey Learn "Bluebeard's Castle"

Castle of Secrets: The recording cover with
Samuel Ramey and Éva Marton

"It was fall of 1963, and Samuel Ramey was a young music student at the Municipal University of Wichita, soon to become Wichita State University. He was rummaging through the LP bins at a downtown Wichita music store when he flipped to a recording of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle that featured Ramey’s idol, opera star Jerome Hines, singing the title role. Ramey bought the record and took it back to his little apartment, which was near where the Ulrich Museum of Art is now. Ramey, with his deep, young bass-baritone voice, had just begun to develop an interest in opera the previous year. He became obsessed with his new record, a one-hour, psychological opera that told the story of poor, lonely Bluebeard and his new bride, Judith, who insists on seeing what hides behind seven locked doors in his castle. 'I took it back to my place and started playing it and thought, ‘Wow. This is fantastic,'' he said. 'I wrote off to a music store in New York, and they sent me the score.'....When Ramey heads to rehearsal for Bluebeard’s Castle with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra on Monday, he’ll have that score – which still has notes he made to himself in 1963 – with him. He’s saved it for more than 50 years and has used it every time he’s performed the opera, including in 1988 when he sang the title role for a PBS special at New York’s Metropolitan Opera....Before the 1987 album, which Ramey recorded in Budapest with soprano

Ramey at the Wichita Art Museum
with a Dale Chihuly sculpture 
(Photo: Fernando Salazar)

Eva Marton, he remembers spending months working on the lyrics. Hungarian is a beautiful language, he said, but it’s far more difficult than Italian, French or Spanish to learn. Every vowel, he said, can be pronounced three or four different ways. Marton, a Hungary native, offered to help. 'She said, ‘Now there is a guy I worked with at the Met. He’s the head of the ushers, and I’ve already told him about you,'' Ramey said. He took Marton’s advice and found the usher, who agreed to help. Ramey would sit in his office for hours each day, just speaking the text. During the recording process, Ramey remembers with a laugh, a helpful bassoonist would turn around and correct him if he stumbled or give him a thumbs-up if he did well." [Source] See a photo featuring Dale Chihuly's 9,000-pound glasswork set for the production of Bluebeard's Castle after the jump.

Happy Birthday: Éva Marton

"Vissi d'arte" Tosca (Puccini)

Éva Marton was born June 18, 1943, Budapest, Hungary. Marton studied voice at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. She made her professional debut as Kate Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly at Hungary's Margaret Island summer festival. At the Hungarian State Opera, she made her debut as Queen of Shemaka in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel in 1968. In 1972, she was invited by Christoph von Dohnányi to make her debut as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at the Frankfurt Opera. That same year, she sang Matilde in Rossini's William Tell in Florence, conducted by Riccardo Muti. She also returned to Budapest to sing Odabella in Verdi's Attila. In 1973, Marton made her debut at the Vienna State Opera in Puccini's Tosca. In 1977, she sang at the Hamburg State Opera, in the role of the Empress in Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, and made her San Francisco Opera debut in the title role of Verdi's Aida.

"Tacea la notte placida"
Il Trovatore (Verdi)

In 1978, Marton made her debut at La Scala in Milan as Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore. She debuted at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1979 as Maddalena in Giordano's Andrea Chénier. In 1981, she performed at the Munich Opera Festival in the title role of Die ägyptische Helena by Richard Strauss, Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting. She sang the role of Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio in 1982 and 1983, both performances conducted by Lorin Maazel. In 1976, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in the role of Eva in Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. At the Bayreuth Festival she sang both Elisabeth and Venus in Tannhäuser in 1977-1978. In 1982, Marton performed the role of Elisabeth in Tannhäuser at the Metropolitan Opera. Of that performance, The New York Times wrote: "The arrival on the scene of a fully matured Wagnerian singer is always good news, however long we must wait between dispatches from the front. The news today is that Eva Marton has arrived.

"Suicidio" La Gioconda (Ponchielli)

The Hungarian artist, portraying Elisabeth for the first time with the Metropolitan Opera in Monday night's Tannhäuser, showed that she has the vocal and temperamental qualities to become the opera world's next important dramatic soprano. She may, in fact, already be there. The timbre is right, the sheer staying power is impressive and the instincts are those of a born actress." Marton later became a frequent interpreter of the role of Brünnhilde in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. She performed in the complete Zubin Mehta-led Ring cycle at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1996. In 1998, she appeared in a new production of Lohengrin at the Hamburg State Opera, portraying Ortrud. Marton first sang the title role of Puccini's last opera Turandot at the Vienna State Opera in 1983. It became a role with which she has been closely identified. Since 1983, she has performed the role over a hundred times including at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Arena di Verona, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington Opera, Opera Company of Boston under Sarah Caldwell (in 1983), Barcelona, Houston Grand Opera. She has also

"Violanta! Hörst Du?" Violanta
(Korngold) w/Siegfried Jerusalem

portrayed Turandot in six television and video productions, including a Vienna State Opera production directed by Harold Prince, a Metropolitan Opera production created by Franco Zeffirelli production and a production designed by David Hockney filmed at the San Francisco Opera. She has recorded the role twice, conducted by Lorin Maazel and later Roberto Abbado. Marton's new roles in this millennium include Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at Hamburg State Opera in 2000, and Kundry in Parsifal in Barcelona and Lisbon in 2001. In 2006 and 2007, she performed in a concert version of Giordano's Fedora at the Miskolc Opera Festival, in Elektra by Richard Strauss at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, and in Janáček's Jenůfa in Hamburg, in the role of the Kostelnicka. She retired from the operatic stage after performing the role of Klytemnestra in Elektra in Barcelona (Spain) in February and March 2008. However, she sang Klytämnestra in a staged performance of Elektra in Grand Théâtre de Genève in November 2010. [Source]